If the structure of language vocabularies mirrors the structure of natural divisions that are universally perceived, then the meanings of words in different languages should closely align. By contrast, if shared word meanings are a product of shared culture, history and geography, they may differ between languages in substantial but predictable ways. Here, we analysed the semantic neighbourhoods of 1,010 meanings in 41 languages. The most-aligned words were from semantic domains with high internal structure (number, quantity and kinship). Words denoting natural kinds, common actions and artefacts aligned much less well. Languages that are more geographically proximate, more historically related and/or spoken by more-similar cultures had more aligned word meanings. These results provide evidence that the meanings of common words vary in ways that reflect the culture, history and geography of their users.

如果语言词汇的结构反映了普遍理解的自然划分的结构，则不同语言中单词的含义应紧密一致。相反，如果共享词的含义是共享文化，历史和地理的产物，则它们在语言之间可能会以实质性但可预测的方式有所不同。在这里，我们分析了41种语言中1,010个含义的语义邻域。最对齐的单词来自内部结构（数量，数量和亲属关系）高的语义域。表示自然种类，常见动作和人工制品的单词排列得不太好。在地理上更接近，在历史上更相关和/或由更相似的文化所使用的语言具有更一致的词义。